Alchemist, The

Paulo Coelho

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams." The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams. Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho's charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come.

Reviews

I didn't realise until too late that this was going to be a new age fable. If I'd known beforehand, maybe I wouldn't have had such high expectations. I thought the ending was hugely disappointing because it was so very, very predictable. I was really hoping the treasure wouldn't be something as mundane and obvious as it turned out to be. And it didn't really seem to me a very appropriate treasure when you take into consideration the main character and the entire story that came before it.[return][return]Maybe if I'd read this book 5-10 years ago, I would have enjoyed it more, but now it just seems like another new age book that's a bit past its use-by date. I can perhaps understand why it was a bestseller; I imagine for people trying to follow their dreams, they can get something out of it. It didn't do anything for me.[return][return]The writing style was also too simple to hold any interest for me. I hate to say this about a book, but I regret spending money on it.